The Content Audit

In recent years, brands have embraced content as an integral part of their marketing programs. From blogs and whitepapers, to websites and social media, marketers can unlock enormous potential by communicating directly with customers, partners and other stakeholders.

However, while most marketing departments have no shortage of creativity and ideas, very few have the basic processes in place to publish effectively. Unlike a campaign where the idea is simply to grab attention, a successful publishing effort needs to hold attention and that requires a significant shift in both mindset and operational practice.

That’s the problems the Brand Publishing Audit and Editorial Assessment was designed to solve.

The idea behind the Brand Publishing Audit and Editorial Assessment is simple. Operational excellence leads to better outcomes. If you can’t execute, it doesn’t really matter what your strategy is. You will not succeed.

Through a series of interviews with internal and external stakeholders, 19 specific criteria across 5 general parameters are examined:

– Editorial Mission: What value is being offered to the reader ? How is that value related to the brand’s values? Having a clear and distinct editorial mission is absolutely essential to create a meaningful product.

– Benchmarking: Are there relevant benchmarks in place? Setting up benchmarks and tracking them regularly is essential to maintaining and improving performance

– Editorial Structure: Are there clear guidelines in place for style, architecture, pace and other editorial parameters? Successful publisher have detailed parameters in place to maintain quality and provide a consistent look and feel.

– Editorial Operations: What processes are in place to ensure that day-to-day editorial operations run smoothly? Operational excellence is never an accident, but comes from continually developing and implementing best practice.

– Strategic Continuity: How does it all work together? Do operational practices align with strategic objectives?

This audit evaluates each criteria to arrive at both a quantitative score and qualitative assessment. The idea is to give an overview of where your brand publishing operation stands with respect to best practices in each area. From there, we can identify specific needs.

What people are saying about Greg Satell…

Greg is a superb blend of integrity, creativity and professionalism. Insightful, responsive and diligent, he always makes sure he gets the facts straight. In my field, where life and death hang in the balance, that’s really important and I appreciate it immensely.

“For every decent source of real insight into the ways of the web there are a thousand pretenders. Digital Tonto is one of the rare few with a bit of substance in all that ether. More than the digispeak, Greg knows his stuff from first hand, upstream business experience. For me that’s key. Precedence in the cut and thrust of sales and marketing offline – because the online stuff is still a great idea waiting for long-term substantiation. We know full well it’s taken off – we just don’t really understand the mathematics of sustained flight – or how to steer the ship. Greg Satell points the way.”

“We’ve had the pleasure to retain Greg’s services as we explored the future of the media industry with clients. His work was excellent, incisive, and to the point. He brings an acute understanding of industry trends combined with a practical approach and concrete references. It will be an honor to collaborate with him again in the future.”

“Greg is a guy who actually knows what he’s talking about, because he’s done it, and he’s done it successfully under incredibly adverse conditions. Where evangelists espouse the next great thing by using weighty marketing speak, Greg talks brass tacks, offering deep, enriched perspective around the “why” and the “how”.

By building bridges between tech and business, the conceptual and the operational, innovation and concrete business strategy, Greg can get you to think about what’s really important, and actually do something about it. Think of Greg as someone who can start up a business unit in an emerging domain, operationalize it, and have the foresight to socialize the learnings. You can’t get that kind of firsthand knowledge reading the wide swath of social media marketing blogs out there. Greg is one of us — he walks the walk, and isn’t afraid to challenge the status quo.”

“Greg is an amazing person – hugely knowledgeable about just about anything. He challenges business and marketing received wisdom, questions everything worth questioning, and looks for how to better the status quo. He also editor of one of the best and most popular digital blogs in the world – Digital Tonto.”

“Createasphere had the pleasure of Greg’s keynote presentation at our Digital Asset Management Conference in Los Angeles. His expertise in mapping and forecasting trends in digital innovation kept our delegates highly engaged. They clamored to get his one on one expertise after the keynote…

Greg’s knowledge and global understanding of technology innovation and the opportunities and insights we all face with the digital disruption is unsurpassed. He is truly an expert.”

“At the UnleashWD conference, Greg stood out among a crowded field that included bestselling authors, top CEO’s and even a 6 time Ironman champion! His thinking on innovation, the digital movement, and what business leaders must do to remain relevant is fresh and unique. Take for example his story about being in the middle of the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine. In today’s connected world, you helped us see that viral ideas lead to a revolution and as leaders of business we have a mandate to set free the ideas within our own organizations. He helped us start a movement to change an entire industry for the better. We will bury mediocrity.”

Kurt Lewin said “There is nothing quite as practical as a good theory.” While this is true, it is still very challenging to link theory to practice. Greg Satell is one of the best I’ve run across at doing this. He has a deep understanding of what makes business work, based on years of practical experience. But in his work and writing, you can still detect his background in philosophy. Greg’s mix of theory and practice is a tremendous combination.

One of my areas of research is network analysis. In this field there are arcane arguments over what creates influence within a network – which becomes a very practical problem when you apply the ideas to business. Greg understands the theory very well, and his applications of it are outstanding. His tent city approach to change is a great distillation of theory to practice, and one that is useful in a wide range of applications.

I’ve enjoyed collaborating with Greg on a couple of small projects, and I look forward to doing more work with him in the future.